Screenhead

In case you were wondering just where the whole “kids get to divorce their parents” concept came from, it’s a pretty fair bet that it came from Irreconcilable Differences, one of the titles in The Lost Collection that only just came out yesterday, and features a slew of major names including Drew Barrymore and Sharon Stone.

I’ll be honest with you, folks…I never imagined I’d enjoy something like this.  In fact, when I grabbed hold of the box for the first time and looked at it, I suppressed a shudder of revulsion, thinking, yet another cheesy family drama better suited for Lifetime than for any thinking person’s DVD player.

Irreconcilable Differences is one of those thoroughly American stories, in which an engaged writer of children’s stories reluctantly assists a stranded, hitchhiking film school professor get to a town with an airport so he can get back to his teaching job in California.  And from there, a life together begins, with laughs and sadness and drama and a great American success story where the duo writes a script that nets them millions of dollars.  And even better, they even have a lovely young daughter together.  But success often has a way of changing people…and those changes aren’t always the best.  When the duo pushes their young daughter off to the side, a victim of success, she ends up bringing up the unimaginable—seeking “emancipation” from her parents.

It truly is a thoroughly American journey.  Some may well call it the ever-lovin’ blue-eyed American dream, but in this version, warts and all.  It’s interesting to watch things slowly collapse, and yet, come back together.  It buckles, it bends, it even cracks…but does it ever really break?

There were some good laughs in here, some excellent bits of wordplay that kept the script being vital and in force. There was plenty of sadness, and badness, and everything that makes a piece a living, breathing whole.  I know I’m getting a little meta…I’m probably getting REALLY meta…but there’s not too many other ways to explain this piece of alarming depth.

Yes, it’s true—Irreconcilable Differences has a lot of depth and spirit to it—a downright soul, if you will—but it’s not a bed of roses, frankly.  This sucker’s got some problems too,   First off, I’m downright amazed to see how often the male half of the original duo is the “problem” here.  He’s the jackass, he’s the guy who ignores his wife, he’s the guy who bulldozes his family, he’s the guy who practically bludgeons his daughter, he’s the guy who fill in the blank.  Seriously, it seems like the problem of this whole movie is all the guy’s fault.  Until about an hour and a half in, it will be CONSTANTLY the guy’s fault.

Then he’ll get pounded into oblivion and it’ll be the chick’s turn to be the putz for about twenty minutes.  Not exactly equal opportunity, but hey—sometimes that’s the way it works out.

And frankly, I didn’t like that ending one bit.  It’s as though they just stopped the movie rather than actually concluding the narrative.  There were too many plot threads left unresolved, as though they were hoping for a sequel that never came.

Ah, but either way, Irreconcilable Differences will be a movie well worth your time to watch, even if you’re not ordinary into this kind of thing.  It’s a deep and rich movie, filled with substance and value.  I’m impressed.  And that doesn’t happen often.

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